Filmtracks Theme of the Month: 10 Most Overrated of the 90s

•	Newest Major Reviews:	.	•	This Week's Most Popular Reviews:			•	Best-Selling Albums:
.	1. The Dark Knight 2. Star Wars: The Clone Wars 3. Hancock 4. Hellboy II: The Golden Army 5. WALL·E	.	.	1. Gladiator 2. Moulin Rouge 3. Titanic 4. Star Wars: A New Hope 5. Schindler's List	6. Batman 7. Edward Scissorhands 8. POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl 9. Braveheart 10. Batman Begins	.	.	1. Indiana Jones: Crystal Skull 2. The Incredible Hulk (2008) 3. Varèse Sarabande 30th 4. Last of the Mohicans 5. The Prince of Egypt

Month of October, 2000

Last month, Filmtracks provided the list of its Top Ten Most Underrated Scores of the 90s. The list inspired reactions ranging from pleasant surprises to casual indifference on the part of Filmtracks' visitors. This month, however, it's time to ruffle some feathers. That's right, it's time to choose the ten most overrated scores of the last decade.

What makes a list of overrated scores more interesting is the fact that "overrated" scores don't necessarily have to be mediocre in quality. For instance, there are some very popular, four-star scores which still receive too much attention. On the other hand, there are scores which some collectors consider masterpieces while Filmtracks considers them intolerable; an older example of those would be Jerry Goldsmith's Planet of the Apes. In many cases, decisions about the overrated status of a score are made based on bloated sales figures, such as James Horner's Titanic, which (while not on the Filmtracks list...) sold to new record heights despite a less enthusiastic response from seasoned critics of film music. There are also some scores which were "the right score for the right film at the right time" (and this is why Titanic didn't make the list) and such timely efforts, no matter how unpopular today, are not included here. Rather, the most overrated scores of the 90s were overrated on the first day of their release and have remained overrated to this very day.

Therefore, in the list below, Filmtracks recommends that you think twice before purchasing the following ten albums. Just like last month, the titles and composers are relatively well known; hundreds of obscure titles by composers with unpronounceable names are overrated as well (by a smaller crowd), but we're out to identify the mainstream incidents. The Filmtracks list of the most overrated scores of the 1990s contains readily available titles by mainstream composers. As the month progresses, more titles will be revealed... leading to the #1 most overrated score of the decade. Every three days in October, another entry in the list will be added.

As you see the list revealed over the course of this month, don't be surprised by the fact that every one of the ten films included below contains fast-paced murder and the intent to commit other malicious acts with various weapons. No romantic comedies are on the list, and that doesn't say good things about the general public these days, for the simple reason that people (men) wrongly elevate the importance of music that accompanies death rather than love. Whoa... deep thought... perhaps a topic for a future theme of the month!

Did Filmtracks get it wrong? What's your list? Let's talk about it!

The 10 Most Overrated Scores of the 1990s:

10. Last of the Mohicans, Trevor Jones/Randy Edelman (1992)

Now, nobody doubts that this is a remarkable score. Trevor Jones' title theme is one of the best of the decade, and the fact that a double-composer score worked at all for this film is a miracle. The album remains near the top of the sales charts eight years later and alone makes Jones and Edelman enough money to keep them wealthier than 95% of the rest of Hollywood. But does it deserve such a top ranking? No, and here are a few reasons why: first, aside from Jones' theme and (second) elk hunt track, the score alternates between average and bizarre, with little sense of the period in which the film is set. Second, Edelman's music is simply not compatible with Jones' material --it's like listening to different scores. Finally, much of those sales are driven by the short Clannad song (featured prominently in the film) at the end of the album, not the score.
9. Braveheart, James Horner (1995)

Before you start foaming at the mouth because Braveheart made this list, let me say that Braveheart is better than the previous pick, Last of the Mohicans, and remains an Academy-Award caliber score. If you look at sales, attention, and feedback surrounding Braveheart, you'll quickly see that it is popularly one of the top scores of the 1990s. But like a few choices that will appear later on this list, I believe that Braveheart is overrated simply because of other, superior efforts by the same composer during the twelve months in which this score was produced. In the case of James Horner, both Apollo 13 and Legends of the Fall were composed within the years on either side of Braveheart, and both of these other two scores have finer detail work than Braveheart (you've got to be a serious Horner fan and have a little knowledge of the musical language to notice these points; read their individual reviews for examples). The Braveheart score is also elevated because of the film's immense popularity. The fact remains that Horner has done even better work for films that don't have as much of a cult following.
8. Starship Troopers, Basil Poledouris (1997)

I recently had the choice of acquiring either the complete score to Starship Troopers or the complete score to Independence Day, and I decided on ID4 in half a second. Yes, the Varese Sarabande release of Starship Troopers was too short, but I can't understand why so many people are up in arms about this one. I watched the film, twice, and both times I heard a functional, yet uninteresting score. Poledouris has created some masterpieces in his career, works that excel in complexity of theme and style. Starship Troopers is not an example of this type of score; its theme (and I maintain this from my review, even though I've received death threats over it) is simplistic and sounds like it was slapped together in a matter of minutes --we know that good composers can do this-- and the "patriotic" wartime/alien brass might have improved in their electricity if Poledouris had taken ID4 as an example from the previous year. Starship Troopers is an average score. It's sometimes a good score. But it doesn't deserve all this mass excitement over an expanded release. The song by Poledouris' daughter, bless her heart, is simply not listenable.
7. The Rock, Hans Zimmer and Co. (1996)

When debating about the merit of music being produced by Hans Zimmer and the composers operating under him at his Media Ventures empire, it is absolutely necessary to separate Zimmer from the rest. I greatly admire Zimmer's diverse talents, and I maintain that too many people lump him in with his students (Glennie-Smith, Powell, Gregson-Williams, etc...) as a person who only creates noisy electronic garble for modern action films. In the case of The Rock, Zimmer wrote the title theme and the rest was the responsibility of his associates. Hot off the rousing theme for Crimson Tide in 1995, there was nothing that could have been more satisfying in the summer of 1996 than to hear Zimmer's title theme in the rainy cemetery scene at the start of The Rock. Unfortunately, the score dives into the pit of electronic guitar dispair from then on. The wailing guitars that you heard ruin the chase sequences of that film began a whole series of similar, unlistenable scores (Con Air, Enemy of the State, etc...). I put the blame on The Rock for all those subsequent, substandard Media Ventures action scores. Even though Zimmer invented many of the basic electronic samples we hear in those action messes, he used them with a controlled touch (Lion King, Crimson Tide, etc...) and refrained from inserting the pounding of modern rock within them. It is the score for The Rock, therefore, that began all this nonsense, and I think less and less of it every time I listen to its contents after the first three minutes.
6. The Mummy, Jerry Goldsmith (1999)

Nothing more needs to be said about the popularity of this score. The album and film have sold well, leading to a sequel and an isolated score on the film's DVD that caused Goldsmith fans to go wild with excitement. Why? I have no clue. There are two one-minute cues in the first and last tracks of the album which deserve a compilation release (which has, to an extent, already happened on a couple of labels). But the rest of The Mummy's mass of music is noisy, incoherent, and simply not top-of-the-line Goldsmith. Given the sheer number of projects that Goldsmith tackles in any given year (a number which exceeds most other major composers), a three-star effort like The Mummy is no big deal. But the tragic circumstance with The Mummy is the fact that Goldsmith composed an outstanding, coherent, fully orchestral action/drama score just a few months later: The 13th Warrior. With layers upon layers of thematic complexity and sound quality that blows you out of your seat, The 13th Warrior is no doubt a superior score to The Mummy, and deserves all of attention that the latter score is currently stealing from it.
5. Mission: Impossible, Danny Elfman (1996)

I had the misfortune of actually witnessing this film for the first time this past month, and I cannot express to you the extent of my displeasure with incoherency of the film and its score. It was one of those films which might have been marginally enjoyable if it had been scored well, but Danny Elfman failed to produce the caliber of music that his fans had come to expect from him. The garbled electronic mess of a score that resulted marked a larger skid in the quality of Elfman's music at the time. From the magnificent orchestral scores of the early 90s, Elfman began creating more of a fringe and wacky sound for his scores, ultimately finishing the 90s with a sort minimalist style. Being an enormous fan of Elfman's early 90s style, I blame Mission: Impossible for this transformation, for the sole reason that it was the first mega-blockbuster that Elfman failed to score very well (and at the time, if you remember, he seemed misplaced in the assignment). Almost as a tease to loyal Elfman fans, he throws the "Betrayal" track into the score --a track easily more poignant than any other, and a track which stood out like a sore thumb in the film because of its obvious shift in quality. The entire year of 1996 marked a frightfully strange and incoherent turn for Elfman and his music, and Mission: Impossible represented the point in time where Elfman began disappointing many of his existing fans and attracting those of a whole other interest.
4. Patriot Games, James Horner (1992)

I am constantly amazed by the number of people who praise this score for its superior listenability, and I get the impression that there are others out there who quietly consider it a "guilty pleasure." Guilty, in this case, is the right word. I've read and heard about numerous accounts over the years by people who place Patriot Games alongside Thunderheart as a great escape of ambience for a rainy afternoon. Although the two scores share electronic and rhythmic elements, there is simply no way to equate Patriot Games with Thunderheart. The latter is not only a brilliant score in the film, but also a fascinating case study in a low-budget effort that's actually interesting to listen to. Patriot Games, on the other hand, is a score and album dominated by its Clannad song --a song which should have served as a great template for Horner to follow as he was scoring the film. Instead, he over-emphasizes the ethnicity of the terrorists and completely disregards any kind of thematic development for the expanding role of Jack Ryan and his family. Patriot Games stands as not only a disappointing and boring album, but also as one of the greatest missed opportunities for a great 1990s score. After all, it's not everyday that a Clancy/Ryan film comes around, and low budget or not, we deserved something better than a Red Heat style of mush.
3. Gettysburg, Randy Edelman (1993)

When Michael Shaara sat down and wrote the painstakingly realistic accounts of Union and Confederate officers for the book (The Killer Angels) that would eventually be translated onto the screen as Gettysburg, I am absolutely, 100% sure that he didn't have Randy Edelman anywhere in is mind. Granted, the budget of the film restricted the level of quality that could be obtained for its music, but Edelman was the wrong man for the job. Edelman's synthetic score for this film not only sounds false in the film, but it is simply inappropriate for the subject. While a score like Glory, which perfectly evoked the spirit of the Civil War, was untenable for this project, I often wonder what an artist like Mark McKenzie could have done with the film instead. As it stands, Edelman's phony, simplistic music is a darling of the film music community --for reasons I will never understand-- and has even experienced a "sequel" album release. The dull, electronic sound produced by Edelman was whimsical enough for a fantasy film like Dragonheart, powerful enough for Daylight, and funny enough for Kindergarten Cop, but it is not serious enough for Gettysburg. As someone who loves the book so much, I am too embarassed to review the score for Filmtracks because of its total lack of authenticity and historical consideration. Pickett's Charge wasn't the only blunder in this film...
2. Batman Returns, Danny Elfman (1992)

So much promise, so little result. The original Batman score and film tore through the world with astounding financial, popular, and critical success, and the formula was seemingly set for a series of highly-anticipated sequels. And yet, even with Burton behind the camera, Keaton in front of it, and Elfman's score over the speakers, both the Batman Returns score and film were monumental critical and popular flops. Elfman abandoned the classical, orchestral construction of the original film's score and chose a less serious, gloomy, and spiritual style, which deflated the previously established Gotham City. Composing cartoonish themes and then suggesting them in a neo-classically dramatic fashion, his score suffers from a personality crisis (which may work for Catwoman, but not for the entire musical underscore). Even with all of its shortcomings, however, the score could have been salvaged if not for its poor recording quality. Unlike the original Batman, the timpani do not resound, the bells are distant, the gong does not impress, and the brass are completely flat. To compensate, Elfman employs the lighter chorus, a heavier organ, and a different array of drums to spice up the mix. It doesn't work. There is simply no substitute for power, and the musicians of Batman Returns cannot compete with a superior singing and playing force. This score remains as one of the most disappointing sequel scores of all time, and die-hard Batman and Elfman fans who exalt it need to do a serious comparison between it and the original.
1. The Matrix, Don Davis (1999)

It is not too often that a talented, upstart composer gets a mainstream break on the magnitude of The Matrix; many promising composers never get the opportunity to score such an enormous cult hit, but Don Davis found himself in exactly that position. While enjoying the premise of the film, I continue to believe that its score and musical supervision (songs) were not a quarter of the success they could have been. This underachievement especially applies to Don Davis' score, which makes use of a brilliant echoing of brass from side to side, marking the confusion about reality in the film. Unfortunately, from there, Davis wastes an opportunity to write a blockbuster sonic marvel. I'm not talking about another Warriors of Virtue style of orchestral and choral mass in theme, but instead I use the film's trailer as evidence. Even a year after the film's release, the new age group Enigma's sequence of "Eyes of the Truth" is still being used for promotional purposes, often bypassing Davis' original music. The use of Enigma in the trailers was so overwhelmingly effective that Davis would have been well advised to take a page out of the Vangelis Bladerunner book and produce an similarly alienating, electronic and choral score for The Matrix. With its futuristic setting, fantastic story, and warped sense of reality, the film was begging for a more ambitious, eloquent, and free-flowing score. Even the romantic undertones of the fateful destiny of Neo and Trinity were treated with the same atonal negligence. In no way was Davis' score totally inappropriate for the film --it worked adequately-- but he could have done so much more of interest, even on a subtle level, that The Matrix's score remains a squandered opportunity of lessons unlearned. In light of this blunder, the masses of people who have adopted Davis' work for The Matrix as the king of the postmodern era need to take a listen to those original trailers and reconsider the opportunities missed.

(and for those you who are wondering why Saving Private Ryan didn't make the list... it came in 11th)

Themes of the Month Index

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